


The Fire

by Coherent_Nonsense



Series: The End [2]
Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Arson, Children, Fire, Gen, Kid Fic, Pre-Thor (2011), Unsupervised Children, troublemakers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 23:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12922683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coherent_Nonsense/pseuds/Coherent_Nonsense
Summary: Thor, Fandral and Loki sneak into a grumpy old woman's garden and get more than they bargained for when it catches fire.





	The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Another story originally posted to ff.net. Hope you enjoy!

“Fandral! Lift your side up more, I am carrying all of it!”

“No you are not!” Fandral wasn’t falling for that. Thor was just trying to get him to take more of the weight. It wasn’t even his idea to bring the ladder, so he didn’t see why he had to carry it.

“It’s your ladder! Besides, if I don’t hold Loki’s hand he might get lost, so I only have one arm.” Thor looked fairly pleased with his logic, and Fandral understood. But still.

“I told you not to bring him,” he muttered, lifting the ladder slightly higher. He decided he would just lower it again slowly so that Thor wouldn’t notice. It was always good to at least appear to obey the little prince.

“He is my brother. I will always bring him.”

They were almost there now. Fandral could see the wall of Gudny Herjolfdóttir’s garden from between the leaves of the bushes they were walking through, impossibly tall and hugged by vines. He wasn’t sure if what they were doing was such a great idea now that they could see the wall – it was taller than he remembered – but he wasn’t going to be the one to say it. If they managed to get there with this giant ladder without being seen and sent home, they _had_ to do it, and he wouldn’t have Thor thinking he was a cowardly little puppy.

Gudny Herjolfdóttir was a thing as ancient as the bark of Yggdrasil itself, and many times more wrinkled. She – if ‘she’ could be used, for surely it was not a woman – regularly scolded Thor and Fandral when they played near her house, and became absolutely livid if anything of theirs – a ball, for example – ended up in her garden. Ambjorg, Thor’s nursemaid, often had to come to the rescue, placating the angry she-beast and admonishing the two boys severely. Apparently Gudny Herjolfdóttir was a woman of high standing among Asgard’s nobility and should be treated with respect. Perhaps if she behaved like she deserved it, thought Fandral, she might actually get it. He supposed that maybe that was just how people as old as the nine realms were, but regardless, her antagonism encouraged the boys to target her, and, more specifically, her precious garden.

It was for this reason that Fandral and Thor plotted to borrow Fandral’s grandfather’s ladder and scale the garden wall. The property was considered within the bounds of Asgard’s city, but its back looked out on a small forest – the same small forest that bordered Fandral’s grandparents’ farmhouse. This location allowed the boys to take the ladder and approach unnoticed through the trees and bushes, and gave them somewhere to make a quick escape if necessary.

So far, everything had gone according to plan. Fandral’s grandparents didn’t notice them taking the ladder, and were not suspicious of their whereabouts since they often played in the forest. They had also managed to find Gudny Herjolfdóttir’s house without getting lost, which was quite a feat given the thickness of the forest. They had even not come across any of the forest spirits or evil creatures that his grandmother always warned him about! That had been what Fandral feared the most, but it was still daytime, so they were probably safe. Bad things only came out at night. The only issue, as far as Fandral could see – and it was quite a significant issue – was the presence of Thor’s little brother, whose unsteady steps and lack of coherent speech had already been getting on his nerves. Why had Thor thought it wise to bring a _baby_ with them? How would he climb the wall? How would he run when they had to escape?

His thoughts were interrupted when Thor stopped walking and he found himself directly in front of the wall. He looked up.

The wall loomed above them, mighty and unforgiving. It looked like a long way to fall, Fandral thought, glancing at the ladder. Suddenly something occurred to him.

“Thor, how will we get down on the other side?”

Without missing a beat, Thor replied: “We will use the vines to lower ourselves halfway and then we will jump.”

Fandral didn’t bother to question how Thor knew there would be vines on the other side because he had a far more difficult question already on his tongue. “And how will Loki get down?”

An expression of confusion passed across Thor’s face, as though he wasn’t sure how there could suddenly be something he hadn’t thought of, before a haughty pride replaced it. “I will go over first, and then when you climb up you will toss him down to me. How else?”

Fandral was sceptical, but this seemed to be a decent enough solution. He hoped Loki wouldn’t be afraid of heights though. He’d once tried to drop Svala down the stairs to Ingrid and she had screamed so shrilly that Fandral couldn’t hear properly all day. If Loki screamed, Gudny Herjolfsdóttir would surely hear him and their plan would be ruined. Besides, as far as he’d observed, women hated it when babies screamed – his mother had been furious that time with Svala.

“You hold that side of the ladder and pull, and I’ll hold this end and push,” Thor instructed. “Loki, sit there and don’t move.”

Loki blinked up at him. “Yes, Thor.”

Well at least the little boy understood instructions, thought Fandral, grabbing the ladder and pulling. Maybe one day he could come with them and not be a nuisance.

It took quite a lot of effort to position the ladder, in the end. Thor had insisted that Fandral wasn’t pulling hard enough, but Fandral was sure it was Thor who wasn’t pushing. At one point they had almost dropped it. Loki had wandered off to look at flowers and Thor had to try to coax his brother back without yelling or the use of his hands, which had distracted him somewhat from the task of ladder lifting. Now, however, the ladder was in place and the two boys gazed at it with pride, each believing that they were much more responsible for their success than the other.

“Excellent,” said Thor, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “I shall climb the ladder. Make sure it does not slip – I will be testing it and if it doesn’t hold up you can adjust it before you climb with Loki.”

Fandral grinned. Part of him still couldn’t believe how close they were to doing this! Thor climbed the ladder with no issues and disappeared over the top of the wall. Fandral realised that they didn’t plan how they would communicate once Thor was on the other side. He didn’t know if his friend had made it down. He waited a moment, and when Thor didn’t reappear over the wall and he didn’t hear any shouting from the other side, he assumed all must be well.

Loki was looking significantly more nervous now that he couldn’t see his brother, but Fandral reminded himself that kids as young as him didn’t feel complicated things like nervousness. He moved to pick Loki up and he backed away. Urgh. Why did he have to make this difficult?

“Thor has gone over the wall. I have to carry you over as well,” he said.

“I want to stay here.”

“You don’t get to decide.” In one swift move, he scooped up the younger boy. He was surprised to find that he weighed less than Svala, but he’d still need his cooperation if this was going to work. “You have to hold on to me,” he said, even as Loki struggled in his grip.

“No!”

“Be quiet! Thor wants you to.”

“No,” his protests weakened as Fandral tightened his grip and prevented the boy from squirming.

“You have to.”

Eventually Loki resigned himself to obedience and gripped Fandral firmly – arms around his neck and legs around his waist – freeing his arms for climbing. Well, one arm. The other was necessary to stop the younger boy from slipping. As Fandral climbed he did his best not to look down, for having only one arm made the ascent much more nerve-wracking, but Loki was not quite so wise. Strangely, it was not fear that Fandral noticed in the boy’s expression, but curiosity.

“If we fell, would we die?” he asked.

“No talking,” was the only response Fandral could bear to formulate.

At the top of the ladder he pulled himself up to sit on the wall, looking over to the other side to see Thor sitting on the ground below. It was an awfully long drop, but he did see vines leading all the way to the bottom. He supposed that was how Thor had gotten down.

“Thor!” he whispered urgently. The other boy looked up.

“Fandral! Throw Loki to me.”

Fandral looked at Loki, whose expression was one of disbelief.

“ _Throw_ me?”

“Yes. Thor’s idea.” He pried the frightened boy’s limbs away from his body and prepared to position him above his brother’s outstretched arms.

“No!” Tears began to form in the little boy’s huge green eyes – seriously, had Fandral’s eyes ever been that big? He looked ridiculous – and Fandral looked down at Thor.

“He is going to cry. Are you certain this will work?”

“He will not cry! He is my brother.”

Fandral looked back at Thor’s brother. Nope, he was definitely going to cry.

“If you say so, Thor,” he sighed. “You better catch him!”

It was difficult to move Loki over the edge of the wall, what with his squirming and all, but once he was over the drop he went oddly still. Their eyes met.

“Do not drop me,” he said. Fandral was confused. That certainly wasn’t a tone he’d ever heard from Svala. “Thor is wrong and you shall get in trouble.”

He was right. If – _if_ – Thor was wrong and Loki got hurt, Fandral would be in _heaps_ of trouble. He looked down to his friend, standing below with expectant arms and excited eyes. Then he looked back at Loki and shook his head.

“Don’t try to convince me. Thor is never wrong.” Not exactly true, he thought, but true enough, so he dropped him.

As it happened, Thor caught his brother without incident, and when Fandral had climbed down himself, he reasoned that it was because the wall wasn’t actually as high as it seemed.

“We did it!” Thor grinned. “We’re in Herjolfdóttir’s garden!”

And what a garden it was! Much thicker and wilder than the palace gardens, this was more like an organised forest – a multi-levelled organised forest with a water feature and a neatly mown lawn. What was best was that there were only two windows at the back of the house, one in the kitchen and one upstairs, so they were fairly unlikely to be seen. At a close second best was that although there was space on the lawn for games like catch and ball kicking, there were also plenty of bushes and trees to play in up the steps on the raised areas near the back of the garden.

They decided first to play hide and seek because it was a game that Loki could easily join in with. They hid behind the trees and in the bushes and even behind the rocks of the water feature. It was actually a lot of fun to play in an unfamiliar place, and if, when it was Fandral’s go, he pretended that he couldn’t find Loki for far longer than it actually took to find him – well, Thor didn’t notice.

It was during the third game that Thor found the candles. They were all around the garden; sitting nestled between rocks, floating in the trees, lying in the grass. In fact, it was through stepping on one that Thor found them.

“Fandral!” Thor called, excited. “Look! Candles.”

Fandral hesitated before crawling out of his hiding place behind a particularly large and flowery bush.

“Yes, Thor, that is a candle.”

“But they are everywhere!”

At this point Loki appeared from behind a tree trunk, curious to see what the fuss was about. Thor didn’t look at him – he was too preoccupied looking for more candles.

“We have to light them!” he declared, “I am sure they look wonderful!”

Fandral didn’t want to spoil the fun, but he felt it was his duty to point out the obvious. “How can we? We do not have any matches.”

“We need none. We have these in the royal gardens. They are lit with magic and the spells have a switch if you are not a sorcerer. Gudny Herjólfdottir does not look much like a sorcerer to me, so she must have a switch.”

“Thor is right,” Loki added, looking pleased to be able to contribute to the proceedings. “Sorcerers look like people and not like trolls.”

It didn’t take them long to find the switch. The two older boys were giddy with excitement, and the garden’s mysterious switch was no match for their determined eyes.

“Found it!” Fandral cried a little bit too loudly. He clamped a hand over his mouth and waited a moment in panic. When there was no screeching Herjolfdóttir and Thor seemed quite unconcerned by his sudden volume, he relaxed. By this time it was probably safe to assume that the old crone wasn’t home anyway.

Thor examined the switch.

“Yes, that is definitely a switch. As First Prince of Asgard, I should get to push it, but since you are my friend and you were the one to find it, I present this honour to you.”

He gave Fandral a little bow and the boy chuckled. “Oh, thank you, your gracious majesty.” He addressed Thor the way his mother did when he gave his mock princely speeches during visits. Gazing at the switch, Fandral wondered how to make this look ceremonious – then he gave up and decided to just push it.

The candles came on with a flash, a small wisp of blue smoke rising from them at ignition. Magic. The tiny candles on the grass rose from their places, floating a short way off the ground, giving the impression that the garden was full of gently bobbing little points of light, almost like giant fireflies. The effect was nice, but slightly anticlimactic. Fandral supposed that lights like these looked nicer in the dark.

Thor walked forward and poked one of the candles. It wobbled slightly. He looked back at his friend and shrugged, disappointed.

“I imagined this to be more interesting,” he said.

“As did I,” Fandral replied. “Do you think magical flames burn the same way that regular ones do?”

Thor looked thoughtful for a moment before licking his fingers and pinching the flame of the closest candle. It was extinguished, and a thin line of smoke snaked its way up past the Prince’s hand. A few seconds later, when the hand was withdrawn, another wisp of blue was released and the flame returned. The boys’ eyebrows rose, and Fandral approached, selecting a dry leaf from the ground as he walked. He placed the leaf in the flame and it ignited, quickly curling in on itself and disintegrating. He dropped it and the flame soon fizzled out, refusing to relight. Ok, so only the candles relit when extinguished. That made sense.

The boys amused themselves burning different materials for quite some time, even attempting to see if the garden chairs were susceptible to the tiny flames, when a curious smell came to their attention.

“Is that… burning?” Thor asked.

“Smells like it.”

They turned around. Not far from where they stood, a bush was on fire. Not a small fire, either – a raging, bush-engulfing fire. It was an odd sight, primarily because it was only that specific bush that burned, and the flames didn’t appear to be spreading or dying down. Thor took a step towards it and Fandral held his arm.

“We shouldn’t go near fires, Thor. Maybe we should leave.”

“But there isn’t fire anywhere else. This is strange.”

At that moment, another bush behind them ignited.

“I’ll turn off the candles,” Fandral said, scurrying to the switch and pushing it – but the candles continued to burn.

“Fandral, turn them off!” Thor shouted as a tree was engulfed in flames. He could feel the heat now and the garden was alive with the crackling of blazing vegetation.

“I cannot!”

Panic was rising fast and as the two boys locked eyes, they knew there wasn’t anything they could do.

“Let us leave _now_.”

They bolted to the back of the garden, avoiding the flames that now engulfed almost all of Gudny Herjolfsdóttir’s plants. Fandral began to climb the vines, praying that they wouldn’t catch fire until the two of them had managed to escape.

Two.

Thor realised a second before Fandral could remind him.

“Loki!” he bellowed, taking a few steps back into the garden. “Loki! Where are you?”

Fandral, halfway up the wall, dropped back down onto the grass. The inferno was raging so violently by now that it was difficult to hear anything else. It was unlikely that Thor’s brother could hear his yelling.

“Thor!” Fandral put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Where did you last see him?”

After a moment, Thor replied: “when we were looking for the switch! He could be anywhere in this garden!”

He took a few more steps and Fandral had to push him back.

“We need to call for help!” he cried, imploring. “You will get burnt if you try to go in there!”

“But Loki is burning!” Tears welled up in Thor’s eyes and his lip trembled – something he would vehemently deny when asked about it later.

“We must call for help!” Fandral repeated.

Thor cast his eyes over the flames one more time, then nodded, threw his head back and screamed “AMBJORG!”

 

***

 

Thor and Fandral escaped the fire with little trouble – they climbed over the wall and down the ladder before running to the front of the house to see a large gathering of people and a squad of firewatchers attempting to quell the flames. Ambjorg, connected to her young royal charges by a magical link, was already present, and ran to Thor when she saw him, demanding to know what had happened. Thor told her everything. The plan, the games, the candles and the fire – the poor boy was nearly hysterical, consumed with fear for his younger brother, who, it would seem by his absence, was still trapped in the garden.

Indeed, he was still trapped. Having crawled away from the fires, Loki was sitting in the very middle of the lawn, curled into a tiny ball. Flames were slowly creeping across the grass, threatening to engulf him. Tears streamed across his pale face and as he opened his eyes, he felt the heat of the flames pressing in. Perhaps he would have burned to death in that old lady’s garden. Perhaps he would have ended his short life in the malevolent embrace of the fire. Perhaps – if not for an unexpected saviour.

The form of Gudny Herjolfsdóttir was usually not a welcome sight under any circumstances, but it was her appearance, as she strode through the flames and scooped up the child huddled around himself in the middle of her lawn, that made all the difference. Loki refused to let go of the old woman for quite some time after he was removed from the garden, despite Ambjorg’s attempts to coax him into her own arms. When Thor ran over to check that his brother was safe, the younger boy kicked out at him and screamed.

Years later, it was falsely assumed that Loki had been too young to remember the fire. He was told the story many times by different people, each trying harder than the last to trivialise the event – to turn it into a harmless childhood adventure gone awry, something to be laughed at in posterity. In truth, Loki actually couldn’t remember most of the day of the fire. He didn’t remember walking through the forest or being carried over the wall. He didn’t remember playing hide and seek or retreating to the bushes when Thor and Fandral became too enthralled by the candles to notice him. He didn’t remember willing the bushes to catch alight and being astounded when the flames obeyed him. The only thing he remembered clearly – although he couldn’t remember specifically where from – was what he had felt while curled up on the lawn. Not the searing heat of the flames or the crackling of the dying plants, but the overwhelming fear and the acute awareness that he had been abandoned.

Over the centuries, no matter how many times Thor stood by him or saved him in battle, the intense feeling of betrayal and the inherent knowledge that Thor was to blame stayed with him. It was perhaps his earliest memory, and while it was foggy and distorted, it remained ingrained in his psyche – a permanent reminder that no matter how much his brother claimed to love him, and no matter how often he proved it, he had betrayed him. And Loki was sure he would do it again.


End file.
